


It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere

by Rave



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:51:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rave/pseuds/Rave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When the team's your whole life, the thing that makes you happier than anything, of course you love the people who...who can make you happy like that. It is a bit gay, really."</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> I did a lot of Wikipedia research on this one, and then only kind of paid attention to it, so the timeline is kind of hilariously fucked. And there was no such City game. my commitment to realism goes only so far (do i like this historical fact --> no --> IGNORE IT).

_2006._  
For a week or so Xabi comes to stay with Stevie while he's getting his apartment remodeled. 

"Of course you're _remodeling_ ," Stevie said on the phone, "you would. You've been up all night comparing your paint and carpet samples, haven't you."

Xabi made an indeterminate noise, a sort of humming cough that definitely meant Yes. "I just want to know can I sleep on your sofa."

"In the guest room even, you tit," Stevie said fondly. 

Which is why Xabi's in his living room now, staring at the telly in absorbed bewilderment. On the screen a woman in a bikini top is yelling at a man in a t-shirt that says _GET BLOWN_.

"Ought to take a picture of you," Stevie says, leaning against the doorjamb. He's had a couple of beers, out with Carra – none of them are expected in training tomorrow -- and he feels expansive and affectionate. "Make a good headline in the Mirror, eh? 'Classmaster to Trashmaster: Alonso Caught Watching Reality TV, Shock Horror.'"

"I don't even want to watch this, it's only I can't stop," Xabi says. In the bluish glow of the TV screen he does look sort of glazed and self-loathing, like an addict. "Already, while you are out, I have seen three episodes. I don't keep a TV, you know, because I always do this."

"Shove over, then," Stevie says, and thumps down on the couch. Xabi's bare knee presses warmly against his thigh for an instant before Xabi edges it aside.

"Really this show is awful," Xabi says, glancing sideways at him. Half a bottle of verdejo is on the floor by the foot of the couch: the wineglass resting on the arm of the sofa is almost empty. "I mean it is very, very stupid. I miss some the, uh, the plot, but I don't think it matters."

"It hasn't got a plot," Stevie says. "It's _Big Brother_ for fuck's sake, Alonso, it's not meant to be art."

"These people are horrible," Xabi says. He sounds both disapproving and fascinated, like someone's sixty-year-old dad finding the Internet for the first time. "And nothing happens. I think they are arguing this whole time about someone burned the dinner, and now everyone is upset. Who would watch this on purpose?"

"These kids today, eh?" Stevie says, grinning at him. "Well snookered, are you?"

Xabi shakes his head, wrinkling his nose. Then he smiles that shy, half-embarrassed smile, eyelids falling closed. "Okay. A bit tipsy, maybe."

"Lightweight," Stevie says. "You're amazing, you are. Get knocked down on the pitch and you pop up like a rabbit, but half a glass of wine and suddenly you're a convent girl who's just discovered Bacardi Breezers." 

"No, no," Xabi says with dignity. "A schoolgirl would be dancing then for sure, yes? I am just sitting here. Besides, I have had two glasses of wine at least." When he's a tired or tipsy the Basque accent gets stronger, the low slurred _s_ -es making him sound drunker than he is.

"So you're a boring date as well as a cheap one," Stevie says. "Hand me the clicker, I'm fixing this."

Xabi hands it over without protest and Stevie flips through the channels until he finds what he knew he would: a bunch of middle-aged men banging on about football. One of them is volunteering the stunning revelation that Drogba being injured "makes a difference" to the Chelsea lineup.

"I could do this, me," Stevie says. "Put on a suit every day, sit on my arse and go 'Yars, if the team wants to win more, my advice is try kicking the ball into the goal.'"

"Yes. When you get too old and fat to play, you and Carra should have your own program. 'Two Scousers Mumbling,' call it," Xabi says. "You will be able to say anything you like because no one can understand you." 

"Oi!" Stevie says, but secretly he's sort of delighted. He likes it when Xabi takes the piss, although – or maybe because – it doesn't happen too often. "'Two Shcoushersh,' is it? Now who can't talk?"

" _Que te den, cabrón,_ " Xabi says amiably, and nudges Stevie's foot with his own.

Stevie has noticed before the odd, deliberate restraint with which Xabi touches him, almost shyness, as if he's apologizing. It's not weird or anything, he's just always a little awkward with that stuff. It's like no one ever taught him that casual violence is a natural part of friendship between men. 

Actually there's never anything casual about Xabi's touch. On the field, off the field, it's always deliberate. You can always see him reckoning the consequences.

Stevie kicks Xabi's foot back, harder. Xabi's smile widens for an instant, half-lit by the television. His lashes shadow his eyes. 

"Okay," he says, turning back to the TV. "So we agree, no one can understand either of us."

"Yer wha?" Stevie says, squinting at him. 

Xabi lets out a throaty little chuckle, and Stevie feels curiously pleased, like he's won something.

 

 _2009._  
They have a fight. It's five brutal minutes long and it never ends.

"A new chapter in your career!" Stevie says, pacing a tight circle around the bench. "Bollocks! A new chapter in this -- this never-ending fucking fit you're pitching at Rafa more like, just because he did his job, trying to sell you -- when you were playing like a bloody amateur, by the way, and anyway it was over and done with a _year_ ago–" and rage is building red-hot in his every muscle, closing his throat and choking off the words, or anyway it feels like rage, whatever it is, whatever. 

Xabi is white to the throat and unsteady with fury, his arms held stiff and awkward. Even so his voice is measured when he says, "That's what you think?" The fluorescent light makes hollows of his eyes, his sharp cheekbones.

"It's fucking true. "

"It's not," Xabi says, "I—" and Stevie can already imagine what he'll say, those phrasebook formulas of his. _Time with my family, time to move forward, never forget, never walk alone._

"Liar," Stevie says, disgusted. His head hurts. "You're a goddamned liar, mate." He sounds like a kid, miserable and snotty. "This is about Gareth fucking Barry. Why don't you say what you mean for a change? Why don't you --" 

Xabi slams a fist sideways into the bank of lockers, rattling the metal doors and startling Stevie upright. 

He spits out something in Spanish, his voice thick and hard with misery. Then he says, "What the fuck do you think, Steven? I mean what do you want from me?" 

What does he _want?_

Stevie laughs, horribly, mirthlessly. "Christ. I needed _you_ ," he says, "you fuck," and then he gets out.

 

 _2006._  
"Well, football _is_ very gay," Xabi says placidly. 

The predictable eruption of loud, laughing protest. Didi says, "Maybe for _you_ it is, mate."

Xabi shrugs, grinning. "It is. Gay is just to love another man, yes? So, what's love? When you love someone, you admire them because of who they are, because of their -- strongs – uh, their strengths – and you love them too because of...they make you better, a better person, when they're with you. So. When you play well, you don't love your teammates? The way they play, the way they make you play, how that makes you feel? More than anyone in the world, maybe?"

"Well, of course you do," Kewell says, "of course I love you lot -- I do – " He raises his glass, to a chorus of _aww_ and _go on!_ "--but that's not gay, is it, loving your team."

"We are all men," Xabi points out. "How this is _not_ gay?"

"You can. You can love all kinds of things you don't want to have sex with," Carra says, awakening from whatever quasi-coma he's been in at the end of the table. "Like. I dunno. Your dog. Or your mum. It's not gay unless you want to have sex with it."

"Oh, Jesus," Stevie says, embarrassed for everyone.

"Sex ed with Jamie Carragher," Finns says, massaging his temple. "If you want to have sex with your mum, it means your dog is gay. Well done, Carra. Spot on."

"My point is, is," Carra persists, "is that's not sexual, is it? Like. When you love your teammates, it's not that you're, it's not sexual, so it's not gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that, with gay...sexual things, nothing wrong with that at all, but it isn't. You know."

"We do rub up on each other naked quite a bit," Crouch muses. "Might have a point, Alonso."

Pepe pinches Carra's cheek affectionately and asks, "So when you and I have a little cuddle to watch Corrie, is only gay when I buy you flowers after?"

After that it devolves into the usual drunken cock talk and drop-the-soap jokes, with much crotch-grabbing. The waitress, to Stevie's secret relief, starts to avoid them. 

"I got what you meant," he finds himself saying to Xabi, at some point. The two of them are the only ones not absorbed in Pennant's strip-club stories. Xabi is watching the team's uproar with that calm amusement of his. 

Stevie says, "When the team's your whole life, the thing that makes you happier than anything, of course you love the people who...who can make you happy like that. It _is_ a bit gay, really."

"Yes," Xabi says. He thumbs foam from his upper lip. "And it's funny to me when Carra is saying is not sexual. Okay, sure, but it is –" He grips Stevie's wrist for a second with strong, sure fingers. " _Física_. Yes? It's _physical_ love. When you are playing with a team, everything is the body. The movement, the power, the, uh, the adrenaline?" He raises an eyebrow questioningly, and Stevie nods. "The adrenaline. What you love is your body, how well it works with your teammates' bodies. This is maybe not sexual but it is very much like sex." He laughs a little. "The ball going into the goal, that's very obvious, no?"

With anyone else, Stevie would know how to answer. He'd say something like, _Your girlfriend know about all these feelings you've been having?_ Or he'd lean in close and flutter his eyelashes and say _Love me for my body, do you?_ But with Xabi and his quiet frankness and unreadable half-smile Stevie feels tongue-tied and clumsy. 

He takes a long drink and then says lightly, "This is some Spaniard thing, is it, being all sophisticated and comfortable with your gay urges or whatever?"

"I don't know. Ask Pepe," Xabi says, nodding at their teammate. Stevie can't hear what Pepe's saying, though the vulgar gestures he's making seem pretty omnisexual.

"I bet Pepe'd be up for it," Stevie says thoughtfully. "Helpful sort, Pepe. Generous. Nice big hands." 

"Oh yes," Xabi agrees. "Although afterwards he wants always to talk about his feelings."

Stevie grins at him. "So you lot are just very secure in your manhood."

"Maybe," Xabi says. "Or, maybe I don't care. Or maybe I am just trying to twist you around."

Stevie blinks. Sometimes when Xabi attempts an idiom you have to sort of go back through the thesaurus until you hit on what he might have been going for. "Winding us up, you mean," he says, after a moment.

"Is what I said," Xabi says. "Winding you up."

"Yeah, that's not what you said," Stevie says.

"I cannot believe," Xabi says, "I am stuck with you to be my English tutor. This is very ironic."

"Go on, lad, mock the accent again," Stevie says. "Never gets old, that."

Later, drunker, wedged up in the corner of the booth, Stevie says abruptly, "It wasn't a wind-up, though, was it."

"No, it wasn't," Xabi says. Heat radiates from the line of his arm, pressed up against Stevie's chest. He shakes his head as if to clear it and Stevie sees how pink the tips of his ears are and the back of his neck. 

"Right," Stevie says, trying to remember why he asked. "Right."

" _No te preocupes_ ," Xabi says, giving him a slightly glassy look. He shifts slightly, as if he'd like to give Stevie a little space, but the bulk of Kewell on his other side keeps him trapped. "Don't worry. I'm not going to have sex with you on the pitch. I was only observing. We are okay, yes?"

"Oh, fuck, yeah, no, we're okay, mate, we're great," Stevie says hastily. "I wasn't – I didn't mean – " and Xabi says at the same time "No, no, I know you didn't, I'm only," and it would be hideously awkward, but luckily just then Pepe starts to belt out "One Way Or Another" and there's no way to feel self-conscious while that's going on. 

The conversation doesn't come up again. Since there's no way Pepe or Crouch would miss an opportunity to rag on Xabi in the dressing-room, Stevie reckons everyone else must have been too drunk to remember.

 

 _2010._  
"I do worry sometimes," Xabi says, "because so often I am not at home, you know – I worry that the kids won't know who their teams should be." 

They're penned into a corner in Xabi's old favorite café, the Mersey dully rolling by the window in the gray afternoon light. Xabi's voice is light but Stevie can guess the weight of deadly seriousness behind it, because honest to God he sometimes has the exact same worry. 

"Nagore can't do it?" he says.

Xabi shrugs and pulls a little face at him, a half-smile. "She tries, but it's – you know, you can't make someone else love something you don't love. They won't watch the Premier League unless I watch with them. And Alex?"

"She knows. New Reds kits every birthday, Shankly quotes before bedtime, the lot."

"Well, yes, but that's Dad's team, that's easy," Xabi says, frowning. "Ane has, because of Real, a – I don't know what you call it. A, uh --" He gestures vaguely in the air. "Like a...sack, kind of, but to wear, with sleeves, holes for her legs –"

"A onesie," Stevie says, feeling that stupid, painful canine fondness stutter awake in his heart. 

"Yes, one of those," Xabi agrees. "So, okay. She'll know about Madrid, and we'll go to Anoeta sometimes, but she might not love Liverpool. She has never lived here even. For Jon at least there might be – I don't know. Loyalty at least. Even something like a memory." 

He shoots a look at Stevie under those unbelievably long lashes. After a moment he says, with totally unconvincing nonchalance, "Do the girls ever watch La Liga?"

"Oh yeah, loads," Stevie says. He takes a long drink of coffee and tries to get his thoughts in order. "'Whoever's beating Real,' I tell 'em, 'that's your team. Madrid – cocky flash bastards the lot.'"

Xabi half-snorts and jostles Stevie's arm, not hard. His warm fingers linger an instant, just under Stevie's sleeve. A heated charge jolts down Stevie's spine, so fierce it's almost painful, like a thumbed bruise. 

 

 _2007._  
Sometimes Stevie thinks it would have been easier if they'd just been drunk. If they'd woken up in one bed or the other, heads aching, still wearing their socks. They could have crept off in the pre-dawn and never mentioned it again, except to avoid each other's eyes in the showers.

Instead it happens like this. Some Sunday afternoon in April, a hard eighty minutes into a plodding, miserable, scoreless game against City, Xabi curls a gorgeous corner to him – so beautifully placed it seems to float to his feet in slow motion -- and Stevie eases it neatly into the net. It's clean, elegant, the best kind of shot, like the ball wanted to go there all along and all Stevie had to do was remind it. It feels like the fucking sun. 

The Kop explodes, and in the exultation he finds himself pressing his mouth for an instant to the sweaty curve of Xabi's neck where his pulse races. Xabi's arm is around his neck, palm cupping the back of his skull. He smells like grass and sweat, filthy and clean all at once, and his body fits just into the curve of Stevie's own. 

When he pulls back he's laughing, breath hot on Stevie's mouth. His eyes are like dark honey and Stevie wants to fuck him so badly it traps the air in his lungs. 

He wants to fuck Xabi. It's that simple. Pure animal hunger roars in his ears, shaking him to the bone. Christ, yes, he wants Xabi hot-eyed and naked beneath him. He wants Xabi's skin slick against his own. He wants to hear his name fall languid and slurred from Xabi's gorgeous mouth. 

In the pit of Stevie's stomach there's a sweet, violent hitch as that primal craving awakens. Xabi's eyes widen – is Stevie imagining the searing glow in that look? -- and for an instant a space of electric quiet opens around them.

Maybe half a second. Then Alvaro is leaping into his arms and Agger claps an arm around Xabi's shoulder and the game goes on.

In the changing room Stevie feels lightheaded, unable to focus. He clasps hands with Riise and thumps Carra's back, jumpy as a fucking hare, trying to find Xabi without making it obvious he's looking. (And what, exactly, is he looking for? What is he planning to do? He doesn't know, he just wants. He wants Xabi's heat, wants that pang of his nearness again.) 

But Xabi's nowhere to be found. Xabi is avoiding him. Which really is pretty reasonable. Out there on the pitch, in that moment, Stevie must have looked like he wanted to eat him alive.

He takes too long in the showers, trying to wind himself down. Even Pepe's out before he is. 

"Your cojones will shrivel," he calls. "Like raisins."

Stevie says, a little garbled through the water streaming into his mouth, "Fuck off will you, Baldy," and hears Pepe's chuckle and the wet slap of his feet echoing out of the showers. He pushes damp hair off his forehead and blows out explosively. 

A locker slams. Then someone says quietly, "Steven."

Stevie turns the shower off and blinks out water. Xabi's there, shirtless and tousled in his warm-ups, a towel slung over his shoulder. His smoked-amber eyes are fixed on Stevie's. 

A powerful surge of heat floods Stevie's body. He wills it down, like a dog. 

"Hey, mate," he says, as casually as possible. He grabs his towel and wraps it around himself -- like that would hide anything if he actually emerged from the little cubicle. "Good assist today, eh?"

"Listen," Xabi says, ignoring this inanity, and Stevie's fingertips go nerveless. Xabi moves closer, watching Stevie like he might a nervous animal, all wary intent. 

"Earlier," he says. "On the field. I wanted..." He exhales a little too sharply. "I thought you--"

Stevie should say, _I don't know what you're talking about_. He should say _No I don't_ , should say _You're my fucking teammate, don't say it for God's sake don't say another fucking word._

Instead he opens his mouth and nothing comes out. He closes it again. His heart thunders against his ribs.

Xabi says unsteadily, " _Joder_ , Steven. I can't – can't stop –" His hands open helplessly, eloquently. "You have to tell me to leave. If you tell me you don't want this, I swear, I'll go and I'll never --" He licks his lips and Stevie can't keep his eyes from drifting to the flicker of Xabi's tongue. "But if you don't, I can't hang on anymore. I can't."

Stevie swallows so hard he can hear it. He says, stupidly, "Xabi."

Three steps and Xabi's pushing him up against the wet tiles, breathing hard against the corner of Stevie's mouth. The pressure of his body is as irresistible as the fucking ocean, but he's moving painfully slow, as if he's waiting for Stevie to wake up and go _The fuck are you doing?_ and shove him away. Stevie wonders dimly if he's waiting for that too, and if it's ever going to happen. 

Xabi's skin is fever-hot and wet from the shower. His clean verdant scent is everywhere. His hand fists in Stevie's towel. 

"Say you don't want me," he says harshly into Stevie's throat.

Stevie shudders through a wave of fierce exultant heat and then suddenly it's like the cords that have been holding him finally break. He wrestles Xabi back, flipping them around so Xabi's the one pinned. The powerful twist and coil of Xabi's body under his hands, Jesus Christ, it's like he's never wanted anything so – for a second he just leans all his weight to keep Xabi trapped against the wall, drinking him in like wine. His blown-out pupils, his flushed cheekbones, the wetness of his half-open mouth. That smell, like rich fresh earth.

" _Carajo!_ " Xabi pants, pushing helplessly against his hips, "ah shut up, Steven, just --" though Stevie still hasn't said a word. 

Xabi twists free of him, rakes shaking fingers through Stevie's damp hair. He grips the nape of Stevie's neck and takes his mouth almost savagely, a molten-steel kiss that sends Stevie's brain spiraling into the stratosphere.

He manages to gasp into Xabi's mouth, "Someone could – anyone could –"

"Let them," Xabi says, and bites the curve of Stevie's jaw, making him arch and swear. Against Stevie's earlobe he groans something in Spanish that Stevie would recognize as _I don't give a fuck_ if it were in goddamned Icelandic. "Let them. I'm not waiting," and Stevie, God, Stevie is done waiting too.

*

They're like twelve-year-olds after, idiotically unable to make eye contact but unable to leave, either. They sit on a changing bench, inches apart, not speaking. Xabi stares at his hands and Stevie pretends to stare at his feet but in fact eyes Xabi covertly, trying to suppress the foolish smile plastered –apparently forever – across his face.

"Well, shit," he says, eventually, when the silence has stretched for what feels like hours. He feels a little hysterical. He knocks his knee against Xabi's, a parody of normal friendly interaction. 

Xabi looks up at him in disbelief, eyes a little wild. "That's all? 'Well shit?'"

"Seems to cover everything, doesn't it?" Stevie points out.

" _Hostia puta_ ," Xabi says, "you are crazy, you know?" He smears a hand over his face and says with slightly hilarious incredulity, like he's only just realized it himself, "Okay. So...we got off together in the showers."

"We did that," Stevie agrees. There's a little silence. "Let's go tell Rafa about it, shall we?"

Xabi stares at him. Then he starts to laugh, faintly at first and then in helpless whoops like a schoolboy, and then they're sagging against one another, winded and shaking with hilarity. 

"Hey, you lot," Carra says, shoving his head into the showers, and the sight of him – shit, Jesus, how long has he been there? -- makes Stevie laugh even harder, so hard he can only make a kind of wheezing noise. Xabi, next to him, says " _Dios, dios_ ," sounding like he's in tears.

"The fuck's going on here?" Carra says, staring at them mystified. 

"We're having a wank, Carra," Stevie coughs out, "go away," and Xabi laughs so hard he rolls off the bench and collapses, red-faced and mewling, to the floor. 

Stevie doesn't think about it after. Even when he gets into his car, where the picture of Lily-Ella is tucked into the rearview mirror. He thinks: there's a sort of person who cheats and fucks up his whole family. He thinks, Well, not me. I'm not that sort. And then he feels better, like he's solved a problem.

Two months later Xabi signs the five-year contract, and from then on they're fucked.

 

 _2008._  
It comes up after the Ashley thing. He and Alex are watching Jonathan Ross in bed – a long shot of Cheryl walking fast in enormous sunglasses, looking absolutely wrecked -- and Stevie says, without even meaning to, "What would you do? If I was sleeping with somebody else, I mean?"

"Sock you one," Alex says. She rolls over to squint at him, soft hair brushing his face. Her shampoo smells sweetly of apples. "Are you?"

"No!" Stevie says, sitting up straighter against the pillows. Bizarrely, he really does feel indignant rather than guilty; he feels like he's been falsely accused. 

"Don't make a fool of me," Alex says. She bites her lip. God, she's beautiful. He loves the way she looks without makeup, how vulnerable she is then. 

"Like I could," Stevie says. He touches her cheek. "You know what a rotten liar I am."

He really is a rotten liar, under any other circumstances. He's a little mystified somehow that he's not given himself away already: it's as if he's managed to live this particular lie so completely that it's become true. (Because it's not important enough to matter, or because it matters too much? It's not a question Stevie asks himself.) 

Alex accepts the truth of this. "All right. Well, why bring it up, if you're not having it off with someone?"

He scrambles for an instant and then says lamely, "Well, some of the lads – Xabi was telling me he and Nagore have an arrangement. Like, a free pass." God forgive him. 

"Do they?" Alex's eyes widen. "Easy enough for some. I expect she knows that boy wouldn't stray if you paid him. I never met anyone so moony over his own girlfriend." She pokes his ribs playfully. "Used to make me a bit jealous."

Stevie's face feels strange, like maybe he's making an awkward expression. He tries to straighten it out. "Made me curious, you know. That's the only reason I brought it up."

"Well, nice that it works for them, but you can stuff your Arrangement," Alex says frankly. "I am the mother of your children, and if I have to read some teenage tart's confessions in the _Mirror_ about how you like to be spanked I'll murder you, Stevie, I really will."

"Daft cow," Stevie says, flooded with love for her. She's so tough, his Alex. Tougher, in her way, than he is. "Never happen. I love you." He kisses her forehead and then her lips, and she makes a pleased little grumble into his mouth. 

"No spankings, then," she says when he pulls back. Her eyes are soft. 

"Only from you," he says.

They make love in the way they've fallen into. It's comfortable, routine, affectionate. Afterwards Alex lies curled against him, an arm slung across his chest. 

Stevie suddenly hates himself so much -- his sickly cowardice, his lies, his self-serving delusion -- that his hands shake. He wants to vomit. He drags himself to the far side of the bed and stares at the ceiling the rest of the night, listening to Alex's faint, measured breathing.

 

 _2010._  
When he spots that familiar figure in the stands – mouth tight with worry, brow creased, wincing at every missed pass – Stevie's heart and throat and stomach change places, violently. He thinks he must be imagining things. He doesn't look there again.

After the game -- which is a fucking embarrassment -- he sits in the locker room for a while, head in hands, wondering what happened. Everyone is quiet: the room feels funereal. Nando's hand presses his shoulder, but eventually everyone leaves him alone. 

When he finally gets it together and heads out, Xabi is waiting for him outside the lockers. The sun's in his eyes and his hands are in his pockets. It's like he never left. The old arousal stirs in Stevie's belly.

"Were you not planning to tell me you were in town?" Stevie says. 

"Eventually," Xabi says. He ducks his head and scrubs a hand through his hair, which has gotten longer since Stevie saw him last. It's like the ghost of the Xabi that Stevie first knew, who had that awful haircut and stammering English and a huge, goofy smile. That open-hearted, awkward, affectionate kid who was always sticking his tongue out and leaping into the air. 

The thought is so fucking mawkish it's ridiculous. They've all gotten older. People do. 

"You look awful," Xabi says frankly, looking back up at him. "That game..."

"I know," Stevie says. "I know."

For a little while they watch each other. Then Xabi says, "Come and have a coffee with me."

Stevie lets out a long breath. "All right," he says.

 

 _2008._  
"Did I ask for that?" Xabi says furiously. "Did I once fucking ask to be _coddled_?"

"No one's saying--" Stevie starts. He's sitting on the bed in one of their hotel rooms. Xabi is pacing the carpet like a caged tiger.

Xabi thrusts the newspaper at Stevie. " _Coño!_ Can you read? That’s exactly what this is saying. All I want is to be _told_ – you know, yesterday I go to his office and ask him to be honest with me and he says he hasn't made any decisions. And then today he tells the press he's pushing Barry through! It's _pura mierda_ , it's bullshit, Steven. And then to make it out like that's 'managerial style,' like I'm being childish – like I want a pat on the head, a fucking biscuit?" He breathes out shakily, through his nostrils. "And you--"

Here it is. Stevie runs a hand helplessly through his hair.

"'I'm desperate to sign him,'" Xabi reads aloud. "'Gareth would certainly help Liverpool be a better team next season.'" He crumples the paper in his fist.

"I wasn't thinking about how it sounded," Stevie says. "I mean, Gareth and me, we're friends, of course I –"

"You're not fucking thinking now, _pendejo_ ," Xabi snarls, and then suddenly he's right in Stevie's space, yanking his head up with a fistful of hair, forcing Stevie to look at him. 

Blood roars in Stevie's ears, a pulsing rush rising in his groin. He jerks out of Xabi's grip and stands, bringing them nose to nose. "You want to watch yourself, mate," he says evenly.

Xabi shoves him back. For a second Stevie thinks he might punch him. Then his mouth is bruisingly hard on Stevie's. They grapple and twist and then fall together to the bed, so hard the breath _whoofs_ out of Stevie's lungs. 

"What did you do?" Alex asks that night, regarding his bare chest in horror, the bruises ringing his arms. 

"Oh, just preseason," Stevie says vaguely, looking down at the damage.

 

 _2007._  
To tell the truth, Nagore intimidates him. At first he thinks it's just that she's fantastically sexy – dark, statuesque, beautifully curved – in that elegant, self-possessed way that's always made him nervous and a bit stupid. It's more than that, though. It's the way she seems to see right to the heart of things. That level, penetrating gaze – so much like Xabi's, sometimes – makes him feel defenseless. 

She's completely charming, of course: as warm and intelligent as Xabi but a little less grave. Always the perfect dinner guest. Still he's always discomfited around her, unable to quite relax until she goes.

She and Alex seem to get on quite well, though. After dinner they sneak out to the back for a smoke while Stevie and Xabi tackle the dishes. Through the window Stevie sees their heads bent toward each other, one golden, one dark. Nagore is laughing, her teeth white around her cigarette.

Xabi's hand grazes the base of his spine under his t-shirt, his touch as intimate and secret as a kiss. His fingers are soapy and wet from dishwashing. Stevie shivers, stands a little straighter.

Nagore looks up abruptly. Her calm, clear gaze meets Stevie's for a moment, holding him there, and Stevie wonders what's written on his face. Then she smiles and waves her fingers at them.

"Help me dry these," is all Xabi says, passing over a towel.

After they've left Stevie asks, "D'you think Nagore likes me all right?"

"Why shouldn't she like you?" Alex says, clearly mystified.

"I dunno," Stevie says, "sometimes I think she'd like – to be back in Spain, or something – I think she blames his teammates."

"She's perfectly happy here," Alex says. "And you're likeable. Don't be a baby." She kisses the corner of his mouth and jogs upstairs to check on the girls.

Stevie stands for a minute in the center of the kitchen, still holding a dishtowel, replaying the look in Xabi's girlfriend's sharp, beautiful eyes.

 

 _2010._  
The sun's nearly set. They're at the quayside, leaning on the rail to look out over the water. Xabi's eating a sausage sandwich wrapped in white paper. The wind ruffles his hair around his forehead. He looks completely at home, even though of course he isn't.

Stevie sneaks a fried onion out of Xabi's sandwich and Xabi narrows his eyes. "Thief."

"Don't you know who I am?" Stevie asks, haughtily. "I used to be Captain of England, lad. If I want an onion I get a damn onion." He pinches another.

Xabi laughs, softly. "For service to your country?"

"And yours too, mate," Stevie says, "y'know, since we were so awful. Really did the competition a service there. Which I'm still doing, by the way."

"You'll get it together," Xabi says, with that still, quiet confidence of his. "You always do, when people are depending on you." The shadow of a smile. "That's why you're Captain Fantastic."

Grease shines on the corner of his mouth. Stevie reaches out impulsively and thumbs it away. Xabi's lower lip is soft and Stevie's touch lingers there, a little too long. His throat feels full.

"Are you coming back?" he asks.

Xabi's eyes, steady and clear, meet Stevie's for a long moment. Then he drops his gaze to his elegant, thick-banded watch. "I'm meeting some of them for drinks in a bit. Pepe, Nando, Danny, Carra, some others. Will you come?"

"Are you coming back?" Stevie repeats.

Xabi takes a long breath. He brushes Stevie's cheekbone with his knuckles. 

"No," he says, quietly.

He curls his fingers at the place where Stevie's jaw meets his ear, leans in and kisses him. Stevie closes his eyes. Xabi's heady forest smell surrounds him.

"Will you come to drinks?" Xabi asks. 

Stevie presses his palm briefly to Xabi's chest, and for an instant that familiar heartbeat thuds against his skin.

He says, "Yeah."

"Good," Xabi says. His smile could break your heart, if you let it. "Good."

 

 _2008._  
"Are you thinking something?" Stevie says, suspiciously. "Spit it out."

"It's funny," Xabi says slowly. He runs a thumb absently up the corded muscle of Stevie's thigh. "I have all this time to think when I'm speaking, you know, because I have to be always translating. So by the time I find the words in English, often I have talked myself out of saying them."

"In Spanish then," Stevie says, "go on, before you think better of it." He's never been one to need reassurance.

Stevie feels the curve of Xabi's smile against his neck, and then he winds his fingers into Stevie's, pushing insistently against him. His warm tongue finds the tip of Stevie's ear and an electric pulse slides down to Stevie's groin. He hears himself breathe out sharply.

Then Xabi's hand is on him, and he's murmuring in that liquid, secret language, his low caressing voice vibrating against Stevie's ear. Stevie arches and shudders, straining into the heat and sweetness of Xabi's touch. The only words he can catch are _Steven, ah, Steven_. 

"I know," he breathes into Xabi's mouth, "me too, I know," and he does know, he does.

*

_Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake  
                                                             and dress them in warm clothes again.  
        How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running  
until they forget they are horses.  
               It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,  
       it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,  
                      how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days  
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple  
                                                                                           to slice into pieces.  
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means  
        we’re inconsolable.  
                                              Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.  
These, our bodies, possessed by light.  
                                                                     Tell me we’ll never get used to it.  
_

> \-- _Scheherazade_ , Richard Siken


End file.
